piccadilly-theatre-london

The Piccadilly Theatre is a West End theatre located at the junction of Denman Street and Sherwood Street, near Piccadilly Circus, in the City of Westminster, London. It opened in 1928.

The impresario Edward Laurillard acquired a site behind Piccadilly Circus occupied by derelict stables, and built a theatre there. It was designed by Bertie Crewe and Edward A. Stone. A simple façade concealed an elaborate Art Deco interior designed by Marc-Henri Levy and Gaston Laverdet, with a 1,232-seat auditorium decorated in shades of pink; it was claimed that if all the bricks used in the building were laid in a straight line, they would stretch from London to Paris. The theatre opened on 27 April 1928. The opening production, Blue Eyes, a musical with words by Guy Bolton and Graham John and music by Jerome Kern, starred Evelyn Laye; it ran at the Piccadilly and then at Daly's Theatre for a total of 276 performances. The Piccadilly was briefly taken over by Warner Brothers and operated as a cinema using the Vitaphone system; among the films shown was The Singing Fool with Al Jolson. The theatre reopened in November 1929, with a production of The Student Prince, which was followed in January 1931 by Folly to be Wise, a revue by Dion Titheradge and Vivian Ellis, starring Cicely Courtneidge with Nelson Keys and Mary Eaton; it ran for 257 performances. The next production (September 1933) was James Bridie's A Sleeping Clergyman, considered by some to be Bridie's best play, according to the theatre historians Mander and Mitchenson; Ernest Thesiger and Robert Donat both scored great successes in the piece. It had 230 performances and was followed by Counsellor at Law by Elmer Rice (April 1934, 126 performances) and Queer Cargo by Noel Langley (August 1934, 109 performances). After that there was, in Mander and Mitchenson's words "a bad patch in this theatre's history", during which the Windmill Theatre, known for its nude tableaux vivants, extended its activities to the Piccadilly. In December 1937 the Piccadilly reopened after redecoration and the addition of new bars and stalls entrances, with Choose your Time, a novel form of entertainment devised by Firth Shephard. It consisted of a miscellaneous programme of newsreels, a live "swingphonic" orchestra, individual turns, Donald Duck films, and, as what The Stage called its pièce de résistance, a one-act stage comedy called Talk of the Devil by Anthony Pelissier, featuring Yvonne Arnaud, John Mills and Naunton Wayne. After this the theatre became a receiving house for transfers of long runs at reduced prices.

From the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 the Piccadilly was closed until Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit premiered there in July 1941, starring Fay Compton, Kay Hammond, Cecil Parker and Margaret Rutherford. The play ran at the Piccadilly until March 1942, before transferring to the smaller St James's and later the Duchess Theatres to complete its run of 1,997 performances. Other wartime productions at the Piccadilly included Macbeth in 1942 starring John Gielgud and Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies in a lavish production designed by Michael Ayrton and John Minton, with music by William Walton. After that came two musicals, both in 1943; the first was Oscar Hammerstein II and Sigmund Romberg's Sunny River, presented by Emile Littler, starring Laye, Dennis Noble, Edith Day and Bertram Wallis. The critic James Agate wrote that the plot did not hold water but he nonetheless rated it the best musical show since Coward's 1929 Bitter Sweet, for numerous reasons, chief of which were that "the plot is not more nonsensical than any other ... there is a complete absence of jazz or swing ... the songs are sung, not crooned, and the singers have the voices to sing them". Despite this, the show did not have a long run, closing after 86 performances. The second musical was Cole Porter's Panama Hattie, starring Bebe Daniels, Max Wall and Claude Hulbert. It ran for 308 performances. Towards the end of the war the Piccadilly was damaged by German bombing, and remained closed for some months. It reopened with Agatha Christie's thriller Appointment with Death in March 1945. Mary Clare led the cast, which also included Joan Hickson and Carla Lehmann. Later productions included Coward's revue Sigh No More (1945), starring Cyril Ritchard, Madge Elliott, Joyce Grenfell and Graham Payn. Despite several songs that later became well known, such as "I Wonder What Happened to Him", "That Is the End of the News" and "Matelot", it fell far short of the success of Blithe Spirit, running for 213 performances. A Man About the House (1946), a crime story, starred Flora Robson and Basil Sydney. Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra with Edith Evans and Godfrey Tearle (1946) divided critical opinion. Tearle received uniformly excellent notices, but Evans (aetat 59) convinced some critics more than others. John van Druten's The Voice of the Turtle (1947) was described by The Observer as "a little New York piece of the Boy-Meets-Two-Girls order", and closed after 62 performances. Mander and Mitchenson describe the next six years as a period of short runs and transfers.

A Question of Fact by Wynyard Browne (December 1953) had a cast headed by Pamela Brown, Paul Scofield and Gladys Cooper, and ran for 332 performances. A spell of unsuccessful presentations followed until December 1955, when A Girl Called Jo – a musical adaptation of Little Women – opened. It starred Joan Heal and Denis Quilley, and ran until the following May. It was followed by Peter Ustinov's romantic and satirical comedy Romanoff and Juliet, which ran from May 1956 for 379 performances. Four fairly successful runs followed in the next three years. Rodney Ackland's courtroom drama A Dead Secret starred Scofield as a (probable) poisoner, and ran from July 1957 for 212 performances. Benn Levy's comedy The Rape of the Belt was a modern treatment of a classical legend, starring Hammond as Hippolyta, John Clements as Heracles, Constance Cummings as Antiope, Richard Attenborough as Theseus and Nicholas Hannen as Zeus; it ran for 298 performances from December 1957. André Roussin's comedy Hook, Line and Sinker, adapted by and starring Robert Morley, co-starred Joan Plowright and Bernard Cribbins; it opened in November 1958 and ran until 28 March 1959. The Marriage-go-Round, a comedy by Leslie Stevens starring Hammond, Clements and Angela Browne opened in November 1959 and ran for 210 performances.

For the Piccadilly the decade started with two conspicuous failures. The Golden Touch, a musical depicting a colony of beatniks on a Greek island, opened and closed in May 1960, and Bachelor Flat, described by The Stage as "yet another American play based on the well-worn theme of the teenage girl, half-baby, half-sophisticate" ran for less than a week in June 1960. A revival of Shaw's Candida from the Oxford Playhouse starred Michael Denison and Dulcie Gray and ran for 160 performances at the Piccadilly and then at Wyndham's Theatre. After a season of foreign dance companies, the Dublin Festival Company appeared in a revival of The Playboy of the Western World starring Donal Donnelly as Christy and Siobhan McKenna as Pegeen; it ran for 110 performances. That was followed in November 1960 by Lilian Hellman's drama, Toys in the Attic, with Wendy Hiller, Diana Wynyard, Coral Browne and Ian Bannen. In December it emerged that the impresarios Bernard Delfont and Donald Albery were in rival bids to take over the theatre; Albery won, and installed his son Ian as general manager. The Alberys had the theatre refurbished, and installed back-stage improvements. The comedy The Amorous Prawn transferred from the Saville in January 1961, with a cast headed by Laye. It completed a total run of 911 performances in February 1962. For the rest of 1962 the Piccadilly had a series of short runs – some limited seasons and others unsuccessful productions. The former included a Festival of French Theatre and two seasons by Marcel Marceau. On 8 October the West End production of the musical Fiorello! opened. The show, about the political reformer Fiorello La Guardia, had been a big success on Broadway, running for 795 performances, but reviewers felt that the London cast failed to put the show across with suitable Broadway flair and vigour, not helped by interpolations intended to explain New York politics to British audiences. It closed on 24 November after 56 performances, and Marceau returned for his second limited season (19 performances). A stage version of the popular television comedy series The Rag Trade, starring Peter Jones and Miriam Karlin, did not match the appeal of the small-screen original, and ran for 85 performances from 19 December 1962 to 23 February 1963. Most of 1963 was occupied by what Mander and Mitchenson describe as "seasons of ballet, an Italian musical and some French plays". In September Ronald Millar's adaptation of C. P. Snow's novel The Masters, transferred from the Savoy, and continued until early in 1964. The next big success at the Piccadilly was Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which opened in February 1964. For the first weeks of the run the leading roles were played by Uta Hagen and Arthur Hill, who had created them on Broadway; they were succeeded in May by Constance Cummings and Ray McAnally. The production transferred to the Globe in July to make way for a musical, Instant Marriage, starring Joan Sims. Despite being described in The Times as "wretchedly written ... ill-constructed", it ran for 366 performances from 1 August 1964. 1965 was mainly a year of short runs, including seasons of folk dancers and further ballets. Neil Simon's comedy Barefoot in the Park, starring Mildred Natwick, Daniel Massey and Marlo Thomas, ran for 243 performances between November 1965 and June 1966. A revival of Lionel Bart's musical Oliver! opened in April 1967, starring Barry Humphries and Marti Webb, running for 331 performances. The next musical, Man of La Mancha, with Keith Michell, opened in April 1968, and was followed over the Christmas season by a musical adaptation of Daisy Ashford's novel, The Young Visiters with Alfred Marks as Mr Salteena and Jan Waters as Ethel. Man of La Mancha returned in the new year, this time with Richard Kiley (who had created the title role on Broadway) in the lead.

Available at this venue:

• Wheelchair-accessible entrance
• Wheelchair-accessible seating
• Wheelchair-accessible toilet

Not available at this venue:

• Wheelchair-accessible parking

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